Florida Mixtapes

DJ mixes and mixtapes from one of the most wildly creative and underappreciated regional scenes in American dance music history - spanning Tampa, Orlando, Miami, and Sarasota, digitized and restored from original cassette tape and CD recordings.

During the 1990s, the area between Miami, Tampa, and Orlando was a Bermuda triangle of hardcore underground dance culture. The beats were vicious, the bass was heavy, and Florida produced some of the phattest dancers in the country. Artists like Rabbit in the Moon, DJ Three, DJ Icey, and Q-Burns Abstract Message were prominent figures almost from the moment there was anything like a national scene, and the state's outsized influence on American rave culture has never quite gotten the recognition it deserves. The scene had its own distinct sound too - rooted in Miami bass and the booming low-end of pioneers like 2 Live Crew and DJ Magic Mike, Florida DJs fused electro, Miami bass, and breakbeats into something entirely their own, with clubs like The Edge in Fort Lauderdale, Firestone in Orlando, and The Masquerade in Tampa serving as destinations where fans flocked to hear the latest white-label vinyl and all-night sets. Meanwhile in Orlando, Zen Fest, started in 1995, regularly drew top-tier talent and by 1997 was welcoming 20,000 ravers, making it a direct forerunner to what eventually became Ultra.

These tapes document a scene that was doing something genuinely unique - and doing it loud. Restored from analog sources and archived here for the people who were there, and anyone who's been sleeping on Florida.